The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) has announced that it will allow, for a limited time only, booking slots to be swapped or substituted between container ships that belong to one of the alliances.
Effective on December 1, the swap or substitution will be allowed only if the boxships involved are of the same type and classification, are transiting in the same direction and belong to services under the same alliance.
Ships of the same alliance can swap their reserved transit slots up to five times per booking and no cancellation fee will be assessed provided that the request for substitution is submitted at least seven days before the booked vessel’s required arrival.
The major alliances in global container shipping are 2M Alliance, The Alliance and Ocean Alliance.
Between them, those three have almost 80% of global container capacity.
